I struggled with what to call this
post. By “live in the moment,” I don’t mean to abandon planning or to ignore
the consequences of today’s decisions, or pay no attention to what has happened
in the past. What I mean by it is something along the lines of what Moses meant
in his psalm. Yes, I did mean Moses.
Smack dab in the middle of songs
written by David is this ancient, powerful text by Moses. Psalm 90 contrasts
the infinite nature of God with the finite fragility of man. It is peppered
with passages like these: “from everlasting to everlasting you are God,” “a
thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it is past,” “You carry
[our years] away like a flood,” and “we
finish our years like a sigh.” Then, in the middle of all this figurative
wistfulness, comes this tangible observation and very practical request:
The days of our
lives are seventy years: and if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly
away. Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Incredibly, millennia later, the
average life expectancy remains 78.8 years. Our brief existence, compared to
God’s infinite timeline, doesn’t even measure a micrometer. What’s more, the
brevity of our life is a reminder that we live, as Moses did, in a world under
God’s judgement. Man was not created to die—we were created to live forever.
But sin altered that design, and we live with its consequence each moment,
including a fixed lifetime. Moses’ reaction to those hard facts is a humble
plea that God teach us to “number” our days. The Hebrew word for “number”
literally means “to count” or “ to reckon.” It provides the picture of a
bookkeeper taking inventory of precious resources for a business. Life is the
most important business there is, and time is the most precious of resources.
Now, I don’t mean to get all
dour, especially on an occasion as joyful as Thanksgiving. So, let me try to
turn the corner…by turning to the book of Ecclesiastes. “Sure, Joel,” you are
thinking, “that will liven things right up!” As the Narnian marshwiggle
Puddleglum would put it, Ecclesiastes will teach you to have a sober view of
life more than any book will. But even it has this bright commentary to share:
I have seen the
God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything
beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no
one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. I know that
nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives, and
also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor—it
is the gift of God. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-13)
King Solomon, the Preacher of
Ecclesiastes, arrives at the happy conclusion that even though life is short,
life, and all that it encompasses, is a good gift from God. And even though our
lives on this earth may be fixed, the essence of who we are as image bearers of
an infinite God, keeps us mindful that we are in fact made for eternity. Earthly
lives aren’t all that there is.
So how does this all come back to
“live in the moment?” Ever since childhood, my tendency has been to fixate on
what I deem to be the exciting times of life: weekends, vacations, birthdays
and holidays. As an adult, I find that my childish fixation hasn’t changed much:
I try to hurry the workday along to quitting time; I try to hurry the workweek
along to Friday afternoon; I’ll even try to hurry these next 3 pesky filler
days along to Thanksgiving Thursday! I tend to do the same thing with the
seasons of life of my family, hurrying my toddler onto when he can be
independent enough to put on his own clothes and ditch the diapers for the potty.
I hurry my infant onto when she will sleep through the night and be able to
communicate with us through more than just cries.
But in each scenario, I’m missing
Moses’ humble request and Solomon’s happy conclusion. Each moment of my day, be
it Monday or Saturday; each day of the year, be it Thanksgiving, an overcast
day in February, or a dog day of summer; each season of my children’s lives,
whether infancy, adolescence, or adulthood; all of them are a part of the
beautiful, but limited, gift called life. I don’t want to blow past these
God-ordained moments. I don’t want to hurry through the mundane in order to get
to something merrier. I don’t want to be too overwhelmed by all that I haven’t done and want to do,
that I lose focus on what I’m presently doing. And I don’t want to miss out on
precious moments with my children in each stage of their lives for what I
imagine to be an easier stage in the future.
Photo credit by Marco Verch in creative commons.
